Broward was born on a farm in Duval County, Florida (near Jacksonville) in 1857. His life was a fairly boring one for twelve years, but then both of his parents suddenly and tragically died. So Broward moved to a logging camp and proceeded to drift from job to job for most of his youth, working primarily on steamboats and farms. Before long, he was in charge of several phosphate mines, and he had enough money to begin exercising political power.

In 1888, he was appointed sheriff of Duval County, and the voters agreed to keep him in 1890. In 1894, he sent his deputies to polling places all over the county, with orders to stop anyone who was attempting to buy votes: this sort of intervention was absolutely unheard of at the time. Governor Henry Laurens Mitchell had Broward removed from office for what he called "illegal influence" over the election process, but the voters re-elected Broward in 1896 anyway.

In the meantime, Broward got together with two of his friends and began work on a tugboat called the Three Friends, which sailed to Nassau on its maiden voyage that year. When Broward's crew reached the Bahamas, they began receiving news of a growing revolt in Cuba. Being the civic-minded gentlemen that they were, they decided to load up their boat with guns, ammo, and food for the rebels, and they completed eight runs from Florida to Cuba in the course of the year. To keep American authorities from finding out what they were doing, Broward hired a salvage outfit to watch over a grounded Mexican coal barge in Key West, and he secretly fueled his tug from the barge at night.

Eventually, the feds found out what Broward was doing, and they charged him with supplying arms to a foreign nation. In 1898, when the Spanish-American War broke out, the charges were dropped, and the New York World hired Broward's boat to take correspondents to and from Cuba.

Broward, in the meantime, was a folk hero. He was elected to the Florida legislature in 1900, and he became governor in 1904. His greatest legacy as governor was draining the Everglades in South Florida so that more people could settle there: today, a county bears his name.

He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1910, but he died before he could take office.